File photo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with BJP leader Kiran Bedi during the party's campaign for the Delhi assembly polls.
An article in the Organiser, the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has attributed the BJP's colossal loss in the Delhi elections to a "defensive" campaign and criticised the last-minute decision to field Kiran Bedi against Arvind Kejriwal, who is now chief minister.
"Being in defensive mood, it parachuted Kiran Bedi to counter Kejriwal that gave a massage that BJP with its own old leaders accepts defeat against Kejriwal," the article says, also noting that it was "a very late move."
"The BJP always awakens late in Delhi; in 2008, it brought Sushma Swaraj in close to the election and again when the stage was set for Dr Harsh Vardhan, already projected as the CM candidate of 2013, it announced Kiran Bedi," the critique says, adding, "In the media, the BJP lost against Kejriwal before the election but the party did not take course correction."
Prafulla Ketkar, the Editor of the
Organiser, has objected to only a portion of the article being highlighted in news reports. "Picking up one sentence and showing that the whole story revolves around that sentence is not correct. The Organiser has just reviewed Delhi polls. The real story that the Organiser has raised is on AAP not BJP."
The Congress' Manish Tewari sniggered, "Six months down the line you may just read that making Narendra Modi the PM was their greatest folly."
Delhi has elected 67 Aam Aadmi Party legislators and only three BJP legislators to the 70-member Delhi assembly in a humiliating result for a party that had so far posted spectacular successes in state elections held after its victory in the national elections in May last year.
The Delhi defeat has reportedly made the RSS, which is the BJP's ideological parent, step in to oversee the BJP's campaign in Bihar, where assembly elections will be held in a few months. A senior RSS leader discussed Bihar with BJP leaders yesterday.
Ramlal, a BJP organisational secretary who is on deputation from the RSS to the party, is now gathering feedback from the BJP's candidates in Delhi for a report on the party's humiliating defeat.